Traditionalist Yokels
Ha. These backward hicks in Rhode Island think they’re not supposed to be legislating from the bench:
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A lesbian couple that married in Massachusetts cannot get divorced in their home state of Rhode Island, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The court, in a 3-2 decision, said the state’s family court lacks the authority to grant the divorce of a same-sex couple because Rhode Island lawmakers have not defined marriage as anything other than a union between a man and a woman.
“The role of the judicial branch is not to make policy, but simply to determine the legislative intent,” the court wrote.
You know, if the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court exercised that kind of Neanderthal thinking, we wouldn’t have gay marriage here, either. Democracy is a messy process, but we’ve advanced beyond that here.
Cassandra Ormiston and Margaret Chambers wed in Massachusetts in 2004 and filed for divorce last year in Rhode Island, where they both live. But opponents of same-sex marriage said the court correctly avoided taking a step toward recognizing such unions.
Massachusetts, the only state where gay marriage is legal, restricts the unions to residents of states where the marriage would be recognized, and a Massachusetts judge decided last year that Rhode Island is one of those states.
No law specifically bans same-sex marriages in Rhode Island, but the state has taken no action to recognize them. The justices said Rhode Island laws contain numerous references to marriage as between a woman and a man.
The Massachusetts constitution of course only refers to marriage as being between two people, because the 18th-century framers were more advanced in their thinking and intended for men to marry men and women to marry women, as the SJC recognized with its 2004 decision.
Topics: law & order
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:58 pm on Saturday, December 8, 2007
One Response to “Traditionalist Yokels”
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December 10th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Always good to see the Left’s favorite modus operendi jammed up their you know whats…
Yeah I know, that’s a bad metaphor when talking about gay matters, but there it is.